The Negro Ensemble Company: Beyond Black Fists from 1967 to 1978
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The Negro Ensemble Company: Beyond Black Fists from 1967 to 1978 Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Darius Omar Williams, M.F.A. Graduate Program in Theatre The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Stratos Constantinidis, Advisor Dr. Beth Kattelman Dr. Joy Reilly Copyright by Darius Omar Williams 2012 Abstract How did The Negro Ensemble Company reconstruct and reframe Black American experience on the stage. This study identifies The Negro Ensemble Company’s agenda through a close textual analysis of eight Negro Ensemble Company plays spanning from 1967-1978. The analysis contrasts Amiri Baraka’s blueprint for a militant separatist based Black Nationalist Theatre to The Negro Ensemble Company’s quest to move beyond the rhetoric of race. Each chapter is organized around specific investigative questions and theories that critically interact with the thematic resonances intoned in each play. Some of the questions considered are the following: How did The Negro Ensemble Company alter the representations of black performativity before and during the early 1960’s? What is the link between The Black Arts Movement and The Negro Ensemble Company Movement? How did Black Nationalist theory help The Negro Ensemble Company to reframe black experience? How did the plays produced by The Negro Ensemble Company deconstruct historical black family traditions? How are the tensions of the transatlantic slave trade and primordial origins of the African Diaspora situated in some of these plays? How did The Negro Ensemble Company permanently alter the landscape of Black American Theatre? This dissertation examines The Negro Ensemble Company’s deemphasizing of white oppression while probing its restaging of black subjectivity in relation to rather than in opposition to Western paternalism. ii Dedication This is for my African and African American Griots, Ancestors and Elders in honor of their primitive inspired recording and performance of history: Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Essex Hemphill, Marlon Riggs, Joseph Beam, Sylvester James, Beah Richards, Reggie Montgomery, Ernie McClintock, Lena Horne and Whitney Elizabeth Houston. I speak your names. iii Acknowledgements First giving honor to my most high God, I thank my mother and father Alice Deloris Williams and Wesley Gene Williams I. My brothers Wesley II, Cedric, Dameon and Rahman. My sister Terri. My cousin Antoinette. My Uncle Victor in California. My Aunt Loisteen in Toledo. My Aunt Juanita in Jackson. My brother-sister friends Reginald, Peyton, Royce, Norman, Darren, Juanita Sr., Uncle Bill and “Aunt Butch”, H.L., Dwight, Billy, Joseph, Anthony, Antoinette, Turry, Tim’m and Charles. And to my grandparents Cletora Carter Evege and Walter Lee Evege, Sr., I forever hold you in heart and memory. Many thanks to my advisor Dr. Stratos Constantinidis who has guided me through this dissertation with tenacity, professionalism, keen insight and with effortless, dignity, poise and grace. Also, many thanks to my supportive committee members Dr. Beth Kattelman and Dr. Joy Reilly. Thank you for reminding me to believe in myself. I also would like to sincerely give thanks to Dr. Anthony D. Hill who courageously stood beside me and stood up for me in the face of tremendous adversity. I thank Damian Bowerman, Eric Mayer, Beth Simone and the entire faculty and staff of The Department of Theatre at The Ohio State University. iv Vita June 9, 1974………………………………Born Jackson, Mississippi 1992………………………………………Bailey Magnet High School 1997………………………………………B.S. Speech, Jackson State University 1998………………………………………M.A. Theatre, Bowling Green State University 2004………………………………………M.FA. Poetry, Antioch University L.A. Publications 1. Williams, Darius Omar and R. Bryant Smith ed. Mighty Real: An Anthology of African American Same Gender Loving Writing. Texas & Ohio: Effusses/Sangha Publishing, 2010. 2. Williams, Darius Omar. Akhona: A Collection of Poems. Ohio: Sangha Books, 2010. 3. Williams, Darius Omar. Silk Electric: A Collection of Poems. Ohio: Sangha Books, 2008. 4. Williams, Darius Omar. The Hooting of the Midnight Owl: Sexuality, Gender and Difference in Select Plays by Cheryl L. West. Master’s Thesis. Bowling Green Ohio: Bowling Green State University, 1998. Fields of Study Major Field: Theatre Specialization: African American Theatre History and Performance v Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………..ii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………..iii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………iv Vita………………………………………………………………………………….v Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………..1 Justification for the Study………………………………………………19 Statement of Purpose……………………………………………………33 Methodology……………………………………………………………35 Chapter 2: Reimagining the Black Family………………………………………….44 Leslie Lee’s The First Breeze of Summer……………………………….52 Phillip Hayes Dean’s The Sty of the Blind Pig…………………………..67 Chapter 3: Poetic Odysseys, Ritual and Black Male Autonomy…………………...80 Samm-Art Williams’ Home…………………………………………….91 Paul Carter Harrison’s The Great MacDaddy…………………………..106 Chapter 4: Re-performing Militant Black Nationalism……………………………..120 Lonne Elder III’s Ceremonies in Dark Old Men………………………..130 Joseph A. Walker’s The River Niger……………………………………135 Chapter 5: Staging Blackness as a Dream and International Themes……………….147 Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain………………………….150 Wole Soyinka’s Kongi’s Harvest………………………………………..173 Chapter 6: Conclusion………………………………………………………………..186 vi Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………..192 Appendix A…………………………………………………………………………..201 Appendix B…………………………………………………………………………...202 vii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION On August 8, 1966, Douglas Turner Ward wrote what would become a landmark document in his New York Times article “American Theatre: For Whites Only”. Ward questioned the present state of affairs for Black Theatre in America at the time. Unsatisfied with mainstream America’s reproach of Black American Theatre as a whole, in addition to its limited appeal to whites, Ward embarked upon an ambitious and often ambiguous mission to drastically shift the revolutionary landscape known as Black American Theatre. What emerged in the process was a Black Theatre institution of epic proportions. Equipped with a company of trained actors, a diverse staff and governmental funding, Ward and NEC maximized its re-imagination of Black Theatre using a wealth of resources to generate wide spread appeal in an effort to recondition and eventually shift the militant didacticism of the 1960’s Black Arts Movement. The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC), under the artistic vision and leadership of Douglas Turner Ward was once the leading and most successful Black Theatre Company in America. During the years 1967 to 1978 NEC staged an enormous body of dramatic work. Over thirty five productions were presented regionally, nationally and abroad. 1 NEC’s bold redefinition of Black experience and its artistic discourse of what constituted the institution of Black Theatre sought to impact the lives of Black Americans, mainstream Americans, Africans, Caribbeans and people of various cultures around the world. As NEC emphasized an international approach in its Pan African aesthetic, it superimposed West African ritual on the European traditional dramatic structure while also implementing a wide range of dramatic expressive forms. Ultimately, the cultural intermixture, cultural differences and complexity of African and African American experience was synthesized on stage. For reasons, somewhat unclear, in the year 2012, NEC is now a fading Black Theatre institution. Minimal resources and frugal funding is presently used to support sporadic stage readings here and there in addition to main stage productions presented in a variety of venues in New York. Not only does America’s most successful Black Theatre institution lack a building of its own to stage its work, little is known about NEC’s heyday in the past among contemporary audiences. A reevaluation of NEC’s pivotal height of success is necessary in order to ritually revive its past situation in order to provide critical insight on its present circumstance. In what specific ways did The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) position itself as a Black theatre institution for the Black nation in America during the waning years of the militant Black Arts Movement? This dissertation posits NEC’s dramatic repertoire as the antithesis to the previously politically-driven, militant and racial separatist Black plays presented throughout the 1960’s beginning with Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman (1964). The chapters of this dissertation offer a close-textual analysis of select NEC plays while, also 2 considering the historical context for each play, as it relates to the social and political climate of its time. A critical understanding of how and why NEC sought to provide a new artistic vision for the representation and assessment of Black experience in America is of critical importance. The Black Arts Movement’s emphasis on racial solidarity is a precedent to NEC’s ideological shift, particularly in its social reconstruction(ing) of Blacks. The perils in the continued struggle for civil rights during the wake of the brutal assassinations of both Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X have historically overshadowed the multi- cultural and transcultural significance of NEC during the primary phases of its development. A number of race-conscious Black plays, whether directly